The global financial crisis since 2008 revived the debate on whether or not and to what extent financial development contributes to economic growth. This paper reviews different theoretical schools of thought and empirical findings on this nexus, building on which we aim to develop a unified,...

Based on three waves of a nationwide household survey in China, we demonstrate that social networks facilitate household financial market participation and risky asset holding. By constructing an index that considers various dimensions of social networks, our extensive empirical analysis...